In today’s complicated world, very few issues are clear-cut and without controversy. In order to understand and form an opinion about an issue, one must
usually gatherinformation, or data. To learn from data, one must know something
about statistics, which is the art of learning from data.
This introductory statistics text is written for college-level students in any field of
study. It can be used in a quarter, semester, or full-year course. Its only prerequisite
is high school algebra. Our goal in writing it is to present statistical concepts and
techniques in a manner that will teach students not only how and when to utilize
the statistical procedures developed, but also to understand why these procedures
should be used. As a result we have made a great effort to explain the ideas behind
the statistical concepts and techniques presented. Concepts are motivated, illustrated, and explained in a way that attempts to increase one’s intuition. It is only
when a student develops a feel or intuition for statistics that she or he is really on
the path toward making sense of data.